Growth hack

Success is often scary.

There is no SUCCESS without change; there is no change without fear (or loss); and there is no loss without pain. Change requires making choices. It’s not enough to dream of changing. It’s not enough to desire change. In order for you to change, you will need to make a decision. You must choose to change. The battle starts in your mind, not in your behavior. The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act. If you want to change the way you act, you start by changing the way you think. The way you think about success!

THREE things that say you’re ready for success:

Ready for change – You desire a real change in your business and are willing to put forth the effort.

Dedicated – Your business is unique, and you are open to exploring new ways of doing it.

Open-mind – You are open to discovering approaches and even mindset shifts that you haven’t known before.

Some of you are stuck in the middle, and you’re just going through doing business because you haven’t let go of the old patterns, the old habits, and the old ways of thinking. The secret to a successful business, is to change you . The secret is to know and face the truth. You must know and face the truth about yourself, your idea’s about success, and your own thinking.

You must change the way you think about success, and that will help change the way you act!

Nothing changes until you know and face the truth, and make the choice to change… and believe you can do it NOW! That’s how to have success in your business!

College marketing professors and media sales “professional” like to tell small business owners that you need to “get your name out there.” That the purpose of you placing ads is to “build your brand.” And that when you “Do image advertising” customers will recognize your company/brand.

The say that once consumers recognized your brand, they will automatically buy from you.

But the truth is, this is a lie.

Let me explain this in a way that may makes sense, lets say you finely save up enough money to buy your first house. You do a conventional loan at 10% down and move in! WOW, you did it, you became a homeowner.

The first couple of months your pretty stressed with your new monthly payment, but your making it. Now this is where the story goes bad, you get laid off at work after only 3 months into your new home, and on the way back to that dream house you get into a car accident. Lucky for you, you walk away without a scratch.

For the sake of time lets just fast forward to 6 month from your car accident. You have no option but to give up the house before it goes into bankruptcy. Why? you haven’t been able to find a job that you can ride the bus too, because you didn’t make the car insurance payment because you had a mortgage. Here’s some more bad news, in the nine months you have lived in your new home, you have made no payments towards the principal, you were only paying the interest. You have NO Equity! It doesn’t matter how much you think it’s worth, it’s only going to sell for what the bank can get for it.

The reason it’s a lie, is that you have NO brand equity!

Now lets talk about your business. When people see your colors and fancy logo design, the first question they have is, “what does your company do?” If they even care. The truth is that because your brand has no equity it’s has no value. What your brand need to do first is to communicate how your products/services provide benefits to those that buy. Don’t believe me? Just go to the next business trade show and walk the isles and tell me what you find. Lots of pretty logo’s and designs, but no way of telling what they do!

If this is still unclear than click on the Buyers Formulas (watch the video’s) and learn the TRUTH about marketing, and what and why people will start buying from you! (Hint: it’s not because you have a pretty logo)

Can you clearly see the solution?

The solution to your money problems is NOT to become an Entrepreneur! In business your money problems come from NOT providing solution’s for others! Can you see this clearly now?

When you become an entrepreneur you help others see clearly that you have solutions to their problems, and for this they give you money! This is how you make money in business!

When I was with Michael E. Gerber talking about business, I asked him to share with me the “one thing” that he thinks entrepreneurs should know?

Are you ready for his answer?

“Unless your idea for a business exceeds anything you have ever imagined doing before, is bigger then anything you believed yourself capable of before this moment, has the potential of transforming a large number of people lives in the world to make a huge difference in how the worlds works, and challenges you sufficiently to risk everything you have to make it a reality, … DON’T DO IT.“

People who spend time networking, on average, are getting almost 70 percent of their business through referrals!

The most dramatic statistic found in a study on networking activities is that people who were asked said, “that networking played a role in their success” spent an average of 6.5 hours a week participating in networking activities.

However, the majority of people who claimed “networking did NOT play a role in their success” spent 2 hours or less per week developing their network! If you ask me, the time investment is definitely worth making.

Actively networking with others means you invite those people to one or more of the networking organizations you belong to, and that you carry several of their business cards with you all the time, and above all, refer them whenever you have an opportunity to do so. Active networking also means having a reciprocal relationship with others.

Did you know that it is International Networking Week?

What’s it all about?

The focus of these events will be to bring together representatives of government, businesses and the community to network with each other, to understand the concept of good networking and to listen to talks by key networking specialists from across the world. These speakers will offer advice and information on how businesses can grow and succeed through good networking practices.

Invitations to attend are open to the wider business community, members of other networking organizations, students, press representatives and interested parties from all levels of government and business. The purpose of International Networking Week® is to raise the profile of networking in the wider community, recognizing it as an essential tool for success in today’s business climate. (More here)

How much time are you currently spending on networking each week? Do these statistics make you want to devote more time to networking?